


like that

by FortySevens



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Introspection, post tps1, yes this is a kissing fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:42:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23430379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FortySevens/pseuds/FortySevens
Summary: Karen’s not exactly proud to admit this, but she’s wanted to kiss Frank pretty much from day one.Prompted by heidiamalia: basorexia (n); the overwhelming desire to kiss
Relationships: Frank Castle/Karen Page
Comments: 24
Kudos: 129





	like that

**Author's Note:**

  * For [heidiamalia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/heidiamalia/gifts).



> Prompted by the most wonderful of enablers, heidiamalia. Originally was supposed to be in After, but...well, the words kept happening, so it gets its own fic.

Karen’s not exactly proud to admit this, but she’s wanted to kiss Frank pretty much from day one.

Well, not actual day one, because actual day one involved her dragging an Irish mobster through a hospital from some mostly-unseen menace that apparently wasn’t _actually_ shooting at _her_.

But day one of _Nelson & Murdock_—well, let’s be real, it was always more Nelson than Murdock—taking his case.

She’s leaving the hospital, on her way back to the office, when she thinks back to that crooked half-smile on Frank’s face when she told him about the gingersnaps and the rocket ship. It makes her stop short in the middle of the sidewalk when it hits her that, yeah, even with all the bruises and drugged out of his gourd, she kind of wanted to kiss him, right there in that moment.

That smile.

It was—

It was something she can’t really put her finger on.

With a shake of her head, Karen tamps down on the feeling—she’s with _Matt_ , and Frank killed at least 37 people, there is no comparison—and keeps on walking.

—

Unfortunately, the feeling persists.

—

It persists throughout the shitshow of Frank’s trail, through her arguments about him with Matt, and then even more when she finds the mysterious woman in Matt’s bed, wearing his goddamn pajamas.

The feeling fades when Frank loses his shit on the stand—replaced by deep, stomach-twisting guilt, because she can’t help but think that she drove him to this by asking him to do take it in the first place, to make his statement in front of the judge, the prosecutor, and the jam-packed crowd in the courtroom.

Except this is absolutely nothing like the Frank Castle she’d been working with so closely for weeks on end, the Frank who was so intensely focused on doing whatever it took to figure out why his family is dead, and he wouldn’t willingly fuck it up, except if—

Something is really, really wrong.

So, that guilt gives way to confusion, because she doesn’t know how she can help him from there.

All she knows is that she wants to, but right now it feels like it’s impossible.

That she can’t.

Frank goes to prison, and she can’t do a goddamn thing about it.

—

And then Frank breaks out, and goes straight to her apartment.

—

Despite running on the high of the fact that Frank _saved her life without thinking about it_ when her apartment exploded under a hail of bullets, that feeling fades again when she realizes that, “You look like you could use some coffee,” is actually code for, “I’m using you as bait so I can beat two of the Blacksmith’s men to death.”

But when she finally gets home after one of the longest nights of her life—heart heavy with the knowledge that Frank is probably dead, because despite the fact that he somehow managed to survive taking a bullet point-blank to the skull, there’s no way he could have survived the explosion on that boat—she realizes that Frank would have done that, would have brutally killed those men who were after her, whether he needed to use her as bait of not.

It’s probably pretty terrible of her that she takes it as a comfort.

—

And then Schoonover happens.

—

Look, it’s just—it’s really fucking complicated, is what it is.

Because the relief that she feels when she sees him up on that rooftop, head held high and wearing that vest that’s spray painted to look exactly like the x-ray she has stashed inside her desk in her apartment—is something she’s never felt in her entire goddamn life.

—

Seeing Frank again after almost a year, with that ridiculous beard and hiding under a goddamn blanket like that’s enough to hide his identity from the world—which, all things considered, is more than enough with how blind a person can be when they want to be—she honestly has no idea what to think.

Even though it has been relatively quiet since putting _Nelson & Murdock _behind her and going to work full-time at The Bulletin, there’s no way she’s the kind of person who can afford to go anywhere without her .380.

And yeah, she probably would have shot first and asked questions later if Frank tried to show up in her apartment again.

Oh, who is she kidding?

Of course she’d hear him out.

And then, there’s that very large part of her that still wants to kiss him, that’s gotten even more absurd about it, because she thinks about doing it right there in the middle of the street, to push him up against the side of The Bulletin’s offices in broad daylight..

A part of her had hoped that, after as long as it’s been since that night on the rooftop, she’d be over it, she’d have been able to push this feeling down into the depths where her other deepest and darkest secrets lie.

But there’s that crooked grin of his and that gooddamn look in his eyes.

Of course she couldn’t say no.

—

Once she gets him to her apartment, that traitorous part of her that wouldn’t know sense if it kicked her in the head wants nothing more than to push him onto her couch and kiss him and keep him there, where she knows he’ll be safe but—

He’s not safe.

Not until they get to the bottom of this.

She has research to do, because this Micro guy’s really freaked him out.

And that sets her more than a little on edge too.

They’re connected so closely thanks to his highly-publicized trial, that if Mirco knows how to get to Frank—a man who went dark for _a year_ after being the most wanted man in New York City, without even having to leave said city, then it means that there’s a good, good chance Micro can get to her too.

—

She probably _does_ care more about whether or not he lives or dies than he does.

The fact that he’s been put in that position—and goddamn she will never forget how much of this was Reyes’ fault, may her corpse rot in hell—it kills her a little.

All she wants is for him to be safe.

Well, as safe as he can be.

She can only hope that leading him to Micro gets him there.

—

Everything about that meeting by the river just breaks her goddamn heart.

She wants so badly to be of some kind of help to him—and she _knows_ she can do it too.

Karen has the tenacity, the skills, hell, she even has Ellison, who would be over the goddamn moon happy to publish an entire goddamn edition of The Bulletin dedicated to Reyes and Kandahar and all the other secrets Frank’s unraveling thanks to his new partnership with Micro, whatever that actually entails.

But he won’t.

He refuses to risk her, even though she knows, she _knows,_ full well what she would be getting into and would do it in a heartbeat.

Frank kisses her cheek and walks away.

_Damnit._

—

In the elevator, she’d never wanted to kiss him—to kiss _anyone_ —more.

But there’s no time.

He needs to leave.

—

Try as just about every law enforcement agency might to keep it quiet, it’s impossible to avoid hearing about what happened at the carousel, and she wants nothing more than to follow the trail of that currently unnamed member of Homeland Security who’s currently in ICU—Madani’s not returning her calls, she’s not an idiot—but the fact that they’re not shouting Frank’s name to the rooftops—

It has to mean something.

—

Six weeks later, she’s on her way out of the office and cursing Morning!Karen for not having the presence of mind to check the weather report and leaving her one and only umbrella at home, when she gets a text from an unknown number.

_Coffee?_

A second text follows the first, asking her to meet him at the same place she told him that she wanted an after for him.

It’s pissing down rain, but there’s no way in hell she’s going to pass this up.

—

By the time she gets to the riverwalk, her hair is soaked through, leaking water down the back of her neck, and she can barely feel the tips of her fingers, but—

There he is, staring out at the water like it’s any other day.

The relief she feels at seeing Frank out in the open like everything about this is normal, that he’s just some normal guy, doing normal things, makes her knees shake—but that might also just be from the cold.

“I hope you weren’t kidding about that coffee,” she calls out over the sounds of water pounding against pavement, getting Frank’s attention where he’s leaning against the railing, staring off at the rain-shrouded city on the other side of the river.

He turns, and there’s a pair of coffee cups stacked one on top of the other in his left hand.

There’s also a lightness to him that she doesn’t think she’s ever seen before, not since she broke into his house and saw the pictures of him with his family hanging on the walls. A Frank Castle that, despite how well she knows him now, she’s never actually met, and probably never will.

And there’s something else, too.

Something—

_Jesus Christ_ , she scolds the traitorous side of her mind as Frank takes the cup stacked on top and hands her the other one, his fingertips brushing against hers during the exchange, which sends a shiver up her arm.

_Now is not the time_.

She takes the cup in her hands, sips it carefully, lets the warmth seep into her fingers.

“Hi,” she says when he doesn’t say anything, just ticks a brow at her bare hands and takes a sip of his own coffee, probably as black as hers is. “So, you’re clearly not in any official government custody. Gonna tell me what the hell happened?”

Frank looks at her, and then his gaze slides away in a tell she’s pretty sure he doesn’t know he has, “Got myself a free pass. New identity.”

Her brow ticks, “Come on, there’s more to it than that, and you know that I know it. No way in hell you went from bleeding from a head-wound like that,” she gestures with her cup to the almost-healed scar above his temple. “And skyrocketing back to the top of the list of New York City’s most wanted, to whatever the fuck happened at the carousel, to standing right here and whatever the hell this is.”

He grins, and despite the shit weather and every single twist and turn in her life, she’s taken right back to that day in the hospital when Frank was drugged out of his gourd but still smiled at her, the first time she realized that she wanted to kiss him.

And that goddamn feeling hasn’t gone away.

Nor does she want it to.

It’s in this very moment that she’s made her peace with that.

“There might’ve been a thing or two that happened in between,” Frank says like it was nothing, when Karen knows full well it was definitely something. _A lot_ of somethings. “Homeland and the CIA owed me one. I could tell you about it.”

“You bet your ass you’re going to tell me about it,” she fires back, takes another sip of coffee, the warmth igniting in her belly not at all coming from the warm drink in her hands. “Are you okay?”

Frank shifts a few inches closer to her, tilts his head, which makes the water sliding off the brim of his hat drip down over his arm, “I’m trying to figure things out, Karen.”

“How’s that looking so far?”

“Hell if I know,” he says with a shake of his head, knocks back the rest of his coffee before tossing it in the garbage can a few feet behind him.

Showoff.

Hesitating for a half a second, but before she can let common sense stop her, Karen reaches out, rests her fingertips lightly against the arm he’s propped on the railing, “It’s better than nothing. There is no guidebook for this.”

She knows that all too well.

Frank looks down at her hand, and then back up at her, eyes intent on her face.

Her brows furrow when he doesn’t say anything, “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I just, uh,” he looks out at the water again, and it could be because of the weather, but she’s also sure that it has nothing to do with the reddening of his ears. “Really want to kiss you right now.”

Oh.

_Oh._

All this time, she thought that she was absurd, that this attraction was completely one-sided, that Frank was too busy mourning, too busy mired in the shitstorm caused by the worst of humanity masquerading as people he trusted, too busy murdering, to think of her, to want this too.

She barely has time to blink, let alone to respond when he gently cups her cheek, fingertips sliding up to tangle in her wet hair, and presses his mouth to hers.

Frank’s lips taste of rainwater and coffee and the metallic tang of gunpowder that Karen knows he’ll never completely leave behind—free pass from Homeland and the CIA or no—and she drops her rapidly cooling cup of coffee in favor of grabbing fistfuls of sweater and thermal layered under his jacket, let’s him tilt her head a little to get a better angle when he deepens the kiss.

It’s all too soon when Frank pulls away, swipes at the damp hair clinging to her cheek and tucking it behind her ear before touching his forehead to hers, “Hey,” he murmurs, voice rough, and when he sees the abandoned cup resting against the toe of his boot, he nuzzles his nose against hers, kisses her quick, just a tease. “You know, that was good coffee.”

“Jesus Christ,” she hisses and rolls her eyes, cups her hand over the back of his neck, tugs his mouth back to hers and murmurs, “Forget about the damn coffee.”

Frank presses his mouth to hers once, quick, before breaking away to say, “Yes, ma’am,” and then he leans in and kisses away her breathless laugh.

**Author's Note:**

> And then they go back to Karen's to dry off, he tells her everything, and then Karen does get to make out with Frank on her couch. Obviously.


End file.
